Gramsci's Political Thought

Focusing on the central concepts of the Prison Notebooks and relating them to the history of modern political ideas, Gramsci's Political Thought demonstrates that Gramsci’s ideas continue to be relevant for understanding today's world. Written by a leading Brazilian Marxist theorist, this book provides one of the most succinct and theoretically focused introductions to Gramsci's thought available in any language.

Preface

Introduction by Joseph A. Buttigieg
1. Youth, a Contradictory Formation: 1910–18
1.1. Sardinia
1.2. The encounter with Croce and Gentile
1.3. Gramsci turns away from the Marxism of the Second International

2. Workers’ Democracy and Factory-Councils: 1919–20
2.1. L’Ordine Nuovo
2.2. Gramsci and Bordiga
2.3. The defeat of the councils

3. The Passage to Maturity: 1921–6
3.1. From the foundation of the PCd’I to the fight against Fascism
3.2. The struggle against sectarianism
3.3. The first formulations of the concept of hegemony

4. Methodological Observations on the Prison Notebooks
4.1. The systematic nature of the Notebooks
4.2. Gramsci’s place in the evolution of Marxism
4.3. Gramsci as a critic of politics
4.4. On the relations between politics, economics and social totality
4.5. Gramsci’s philosophical conceptions

5. The ‘Extended’ Theory of the State
5.1. The concept of ‘civil society’
5.2. ‘Regulated society’ and the end of the state

6. Socialist Strategy in the ‘West’
6.1. War of movement and war of position
6.2. On the concept of passive revolution
6.3. From Gramsci’s proposal of a ‘constituent assembly’ to Togliatti’s 'progressive democracy’

7. The Party as ‘Collective Intellectual’

8. The Current Relevance and Universality of Gramsci
8.1. Another socialist model
8.2. A radical conception of democracy
8.3. With Gramsci, beyond Gramsci

Appendix One: General Will and Democracy in Rousseau, Hegel and Gramsci
1.1. The priority of the public
1.2. Rousseau and the general will
1.3. Hegel and the determinations of will
1.4. Gramsci and hegemony as contract

Appendix Two: The Neoliberal Age: Passive Revolution or Counter-Reformation?
2.1. Passive revolution
2.2. Counter-reformation
2.3. The welfare-state as passive revolution
2.4. Neoliberalism as counter-reformation
2.5. Transformism

Appendix Three: Gramsci and Brazil
3.1. Reception
3.2. Uses

References
Index